Downtown’s deteriorating highway bridge known as I-345 has emerged as an invaluable piece of community hardware. Today, the elevated freeway link serves added duty as the starting point for a wide discussion of how the freeway system functions, or doesn’t, where the spokes converge on central Dallas.

I-345 is part of the hub, and a collection of critics is demanding its removal. They call it a blight on the urban core and an unnecessary barrier to development on downtown’s eastern edge. Defenders call it an absolutely necessary pathway used by tens of thousands of southern Dallas workers each day to reach their jobs.

The debate is a healthy one, and this newspaper welcomes it for the innovations it may provoke. But do not mistake the real urgency involved: Teardown proponents are impatient to make the bridge go away, but safety is the only legitimate imperative for the here and now.

For that reason, Mayor Mike Rawlings and other city leaders wisely support TxDOT’s plans for a rehabilitation project for the 40-year-old bridgework. The structure undulates under pounding from 200,000 vehicles a day, opening up cracks in the pavement. Highway officials have lined up funding from Austin to stabilize it. That work should proceed. To do otherwise would be irresponsible.

At the same time, TxDOT and city officials should get moving on a comprehensive study on the bridge’s longer-term future. The list of considerations is a long one and needs to be systematically aired with those with a stake in the debate. Issues include:

• Economic benefits of opening up more than 200 acres for development where the bridge now stands.

• Who bears the cost of new freeway interchanges and surface streets.

• Impact on commuters, many of them southern Dallas workers who use the road to reach major job centers beyond downtown, including the Stemmons and North Central Expressway corridors.

• Whether motorists would face costlier trips, assuming construction of a new toll road along the Trinity River.

• Impact on neighborhoods that would absorb traffic now carried by the highway.

• How other congested freeway links would be affected and whether added projects would be needed.

Reliable data is key to these conversations, and we see no reason TxDOT and city planners can’t prepare a framework to roll out for the public by sometime next year. People will want to see scenarios displayed for how drive times and businesses would be affected.

The impetus for the teardown proposal is to nurture an urban landscape that’s people-centered and not car-centered. We get that and support that. Over the years, that general goal helped bring about a rebuilt Central Expressway that was less imposing than originally designed. It led to a deck park over Woodall Rodgers Freeway. It helped forge consensus on deconstructing S.M. Wright Freeway and replacing it with a boulevard in South Dallas.

The wider look at making the city’s freeways less obtrusive should add one more to the mix: I-30 just east of downtown. Sinking that stretch could be transformative for struggling communities around Fair Park.

Not everyone gets what they want through these civic dialogues, and agreed-upon goals may be out of financial reach. But it’s better to sort through the possibilities than not. The process produces passionate voices that help build a better city.